Memes, in internet culture, are defined loosely as widespread in-jokes within online communities. Pre-2007, these may have also been called "fads" in some communities. There are many memes on Facepunch. Many of the more popular memes have been rejected by the community at large over time, and the popularly accepted memes either originate in-house, migrated over early on or are shared with related websites such as Something Awful and 4chan. Memes were considered a bannable offense for a long time, but some regulations were loosened with the shift over to the New Sites Forum.

List of Memes

Notable Facepunch Born

Hide-the-Pain Harold

Hide-the-Pain Harold is a nickname popularly given to a senior stock photography model which in many photos that he has posed in can appear to be suppressing discomfort with his life.

On various humor and meme-related websites across the internet, stock photos that "Harold" has posed in have been edited into 'image macros' or have been captioned, generally as parts of jokes, relating to the facial expressions very often seen on his face.

The earliest known thread containing photos featuring "Harold" was posted on Facepunch by a user named "Greenen72" on the 13th of September of 2011.[1]

That Cat

That Cat is a popular high-res image of the face of a cat- "that cat"- that was used as a "ban me". Often seen as a sort of ritual, in which the posting user is permabanned and is saluted as an honorable way of closing one's account- a martyr, of sorts. The reason for the banning of the image was to stop its frequent posting, as it stretches the page it is posted on, but it continues to be posted based only on its history and the fact that it was bannable until early March of 2018.

Dan was boobies

Dan was boobies comes from a 2010 thread by user The Big Bomb called My hot wetdream, where he told the story of a wet dream in which he and 3 friends gang bang a girl in his class. The story lists out which friend is doing what: "My dream involved me sticking my pregnancy stick in her mouth, and forcefeeding her. My friend James was ramming her up the ass. Alec was up the vagina. and Dan was boobies".[2] The disturbing nature of the story, as well as the unintentionally humorous wording of the last part of the list, lead to the story being the focus of Facepunch's attention. Internet detectives eventually shared the story with the girl.

Badage Boys

The Badage Boys is an old semi-frequent, but now progressively more uncommon, "ban me" method usually used in General Discussion or Sensationalist Headlines. The method is to post an extremely sensationalist, shocking, or terrifying thread title to lure readers, but use a copy-pasted description of a long series of people, assumed to make up the "Badage Boys", who are "back in town". The accompanying images, which sometimes vary, are usually the same in every instance and really have nothing to do with the descriptions of the Badage Boys. Their origin is unknown, but the meme seemingly migrated to the forum from elsewhere.[3]

"im crying. we are gonna be poor. oh fuck oh fuck"

In 2006, Gold Member was raised to 999.95$ by garry in order to prevent further gold members from being created. Thinking this was a joke, user Monkey_123 bought gold membership, but found that it really did charge him almost 1000$, leading to him posting a memorable line: "im crying. we are gonna be poor. oh fuck oh fuck i need to email garry and demand a refund". The refund was given, Monkey_123 banned, and Garry's Paypal closed.

Firerain

Firerain is a user and former mod, who is well known in the community for shitposting, his Snoop Dogg avatar and imagery, and his title of "The Titty King". The hilarity of his posting habits earned him a popular status among Facepunchers, eventually granting him respected user and moderator status, until ultimately being banned. Some believe he is a mod, or possibly Garry, posting in disguise.

Doug

Doug is a user who has attempted to take over Facepunch. Though totally unsuccessful, he has not given up on his quest for "Dougpunch". Most of Doug's pre-ban posts were in the OIFY, and post-ban posts are Badage Boys.

Tyrannical, Russian-type style bullshit

Towards the end of 2013, user Natrox posted the thread postal and the rust forum, containing a video recorded by a user (identifying himself as ZombieMaster2012) who is unfamiliar with the way Facepunch works complaining of his ban (and demonstrating his alt), and in the middle of recording gets his alt permabanned from the forum, and instead of stopping to figure out what is going on, launches into an angry tirade. Most notable from this tirade are the words "Now that's just some tyrannical, Russian-type style bullshit right there".

The comedic value of these words, combined with his anger, caused widespread popularity with Facepunchers.

Twingo

Based on the Renault Twingo, an automobile from the early 2000s. Began in LMAO Pics.

Wok

Otherwise an image of a wok, it entered the popular consciousness after the German company hosting the image sent a DMCA takedown notice to Facepunch Studios as to get the posted image removed.

Dead Fads

These are all fads and memes that are no longer popular or rarely used, most of which have been generated on other websites.

Get to the chopper/get to the bunker

Both of these variations were bannable, and the word "bunker" granted an instaban early on, because of their widespread use. These were common fads at the time outside of Facepunch, especially on Something Awful and YTMND.

Austin Powers Pun/Mojo

An image of Austin Powers posted with, preceding, or following the traditional Sensationalist Headlines puns in every thread. Became bannable at one point, and then was exempt from banning. By the time it was exempted, its usage had fallen out of favor.

The famous disco ball .gif image.

Downtime Messages

Various images that were shown when the forums were down - specifically, a very angry American-looking American, and a disco ball gif suggesting the viewer "get down" like the servers.

Mingebag

A once popular title for new people to Facepunch or Garry's Mod, it is now almost never used on the forum and is almost never seen online on Garry's Mod as the player name now defaults to the player's Steam username.

"im just a blob, wat can i do"

Apparently a meme so old that most mods won't even ban you for it because they don't know what it is.[5]

"I caught a ____, what should I do with him?"/Convert it to Communism

Started with the thread I've captured a tic!, in which user ProboardslolV2 caught a tic, and then converted it to communism.[6] Other users copied this formula and created such threads as "I caught a bug and converted it to communism", "I caught a pedophile, what should I do with him?" and "I caught a communist, what should I do with him?". Became bannable as a meme reply after persistent use in 2010.

Waffleman

From a thread about the FounontheTape map set called ", it's a distorted image of a creepy, smiling severed head, with the caption "Hey bro I made some waffles, want some?".[7] Fell out of favor naturally.

I survived 7-2-10

A common avatar after the great Pr3dator raid in which the forums were completely trashed and hundreds banned by the former moderator.

Gentlemen

Cartoon image of the TF2 Spy with many cigarettes in his mouth at once and a blank, dead stare in his eyes. Copied around and then became a meme outside of Facepunch.

Fucking Incredible

Google raid by many members that exploited Google's algorithm for site rankings based on frequency of certain terms. Users would casually slip the phrase "Fucking Incredible" into posts, linking to Facepunch, which contributed to FP being the 1st result when searching for "Fucking Incredible". The algorithms no longer work this way, and while it may have been abandoned in popular use, it is sometimes referenced.

Dr. Hax

Once popular meme from GMod player and Machinima maker DasBoSchitt, of Dr. Breen with an inflated head screaming "Hax" at someone using exploits, before tossing a computer monitor at them. Disowned when Facepunch "grew out of" random humor and turned away from it, but still popular outside of FP.

Mister Royzo

Primarily a LMAO Pics cult based around user Mister Royzo, known for his 3D animations, work related to Team Fortress 2 with Daimao, classy skeleton/skull avatar and content.[9] Faded out following his gradual inactivity on the forum.

Chicken on a Raft

A site created by Mister Royzo, consisting of a cartoon chicken on a cartoon raft, with a folkish song about a chicken on a rafter playing.[10] Traditionally used to fake people out, by unexpectedly changing spoiler tags to links to the site, or purposefully misleading people into clicking the link. The site went down sometime in the Summer of 2013,[11] but returned online later by Fall of that same year, albeit with its original song replaced,[12] now using the Cyril Tawney version rather than the cover by The Young Tradition,[13] to the displeasure of those familiar with that version. Mostly uncommon now.

Skeletons

Began from the classic "and then a skeleton popped out" meme from 4chan's /x/ board, parodying and mocking the community there, but was later combined with a second fad focusing on "spooky scary skeletons", based around a children's song of the same name, popularized by Mister Royzo. A site similar to the used for Chicken on a Raft is created, called Royzolled.[14]

Later combined further with "Mr. Bones' Wild Ride", a 4chan story about a never-ending, terrifying ride made in RollerCoaster Tycoon; "Rattle me bones", a song derived from an advertisement for a board game about a motorized pirate skeleton; "2Spooky" as a combination with the exaggerated XBox Live community names and video titles.

Desert Rat

Banned user known for rating spam, particularly Winner, in LMAO Pics.

Page King

Bannable offense, in which a user who had the first post of a page was the "page king" and was expected to post good or plentiful content, or original content. Made bannable in 2011 for unknown reasons.

Seagull

Users would purposefully misidentify pigeons as seagulls, and later all sort of birds and animals. Now a bannable offense under "meme reply".

Florida Man

Users would constantly make threads about people from Florida having things happen to them even if it's incredibly simple in Sensationalist Headlines. The fad died out roughly around the same day it was born, though it is still referenced.

Get Out Frog

Originating from Something Awful, the emote and image was popular for a time as a response and general humor. Featuring a frog, based off an elusive stuffed frog found in a softcore porn image, the animal says "Get Out". On FP, used mostly to attack bad posters. Variations include the "Deal with it Dog" and the "Please Leave Toad," the latter becoming an emoticon in 2015.[15]

Deal With It

A reddit and Tumblr meme popular for a while, featuring a pixelated pair of glasses falling in slow motion onto the face of a person of stature or in a smug position.

Smug

One of many meme-ish emotes, :smug: was used to indicate smugness, and became popular and overused. It later returned in 2015 as a result of the Facepunch Custom Emoticon Project.

Photoshop Contests

Plenty of memes, such as the previously mentioned Hide-the-Pain Harold, originated from the Photoshop Contests forum section, to the point of reaching wider spread across the Internet.

The Sandwich Incident: Inspired by images posted in LMAO Pics, Subway sandwiches were photoshopped into scenes from hentai comics, which would a couple months later be spammed on Subway's official Facebook page.

Dancing Rocket Man: Potentially originating on Facepunch, it is an image of a balaclava-clad man seemingly dancing with two RPG rockets in his hands. Became the center of a large Photoshop contest.[16]

Clip Art Covers: Inspired by a Tumblr blog,[17] user RobbL created a thread in Photoshop Contests for recreating any cover art using only clip art and Comic Sans.[18] Became widely popular outside of the forum.

Football Guy

Similarly to Dancing Rocket Man and Hide-the-Pain Harold, this image of Arizona Cardinals quarterback Brian St. Pierre, posted in the then-recent LMAO Pics thread, became subject to many Photoshops.[19][20]

Ukulele Guy

A once common meme across the forum, the basis for the joke was that one would zoom into an image, as if something were hidden in the enlarged section, only to reveal a jolly man playing a ukulele, in most cases seemingly out of nowhere.[21]

Thanks, Obama

Originating from a fad calling Obama "Obongo" in a parody of the racism of right-wingers, this meme caught on from reddit and Something Awful, in which situations or problems having nothing to do with the president are blamed on him, parodying the disposition of right-wingers to do so.

Check your privilege

Tumblr and 4chan meme that parodies progressives and radical liberationists (feminists, etc) and the concept of privilege. It, along with the term "Social Justice Warrior", fell out of popular use on the forum during the 2010s.

Facepunch received its own emoticon for the phrase during Wave 2 of The Facepunch Custom Emoticon Project.[22]

Smartness

A feature to the forum prior to its 2009 update, Smartness was a system intended to force users to spell words properly and use correct grammar, with the Bad Spelling rating being given to those who failed in that regard. While many users would later cite it as having been useful for them, it wasn't popular with everyone.[23] Several memes spawned out of the system;

Sopme: After user american_moron accidentally misspelled the word "some" in the thread titled "I WANT SOPME ANSWERS!",[24] users quickly latched onto it and began intentionally misspelling the word.[25] Was bannable under the Smartness system.

Sniggering: Users caught sniggering (or just using the word snigger) were instabanned by the Smartness system due to the word's similarity with a racial slur.

Take it to the vets

Like "Convert it to Communism" above, a random reply, but this time in relation to anything sick, dying, or having problems, including pets, computers, and body parts.

An edit of Loss.

Nope.avi

Video of a Engineer from TF2 extending his neck and saying "Nope". Became the basis for a series of similar videos. The video was created by Jimbomcb.

Vagineer

Basis for a series of offshoots. A series of videos about a TF2 Engineer with a vagina-like facial structure, who speaks in reverse Engineer lines.

Loss

Loss is a recurring macro image online that, on Facepunch, has primarily been used in LMAO Pics in modifications and Photoshops. It is derived from the infamous Ctrl+Alt+Del webcomic strip of the same name. Due to its overusage, it was banned for some time in the thread series, causing many to try and circumvent being banned by hiding the meme in images. It was eventually decided to unban Loss in October of 2017.[26]